Friday, January 22, 2016

Oral Sex Causes Head & Neck Cancer: HPV Study

A new highly-regarded study shows a 22-fold increased risk for incident oropharyngeal cancer, a head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), following evidence of human papillomavirus (HPV) in the mouth -- likely transmitted via oral sex. Decades ago, such cancers were less common and assumed to be caused by smoking and drinking.

Dr. Ilir Agalliu and colleagues at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York looked at the records of more than 96,000 people taking part in a big medical study.

They all took a mouthwash test for oral HPV infection as part of the study. Four years later, 132 of them had developed some form of head and neck cancer. The researchers compared each patient with cancer to three similar people who didn't get it.

People infected with a strain called HPV-16 were between two and 22 times as likely to be in the cancer group, the team reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association's JAMA Oncology.

Experts believe 70 percent of all head and neck cancers are caused by HPV, likely spread by oral sex. According to experts, by 2020 head and neck cancer will beat out cervical cancer as the most common HPV-related cancer.

Dr Agalliu explained what prompted this study. "We had previously detected an unusually high prevalence of HPV types found on the skin and in skin cancers in the oral cavity, in addition to HPV16 and other high-risk types," he told Medscape Medical News.

"Moreover, there have been no prospective studies examining associations between oral HPVs and the subsequent risk of head and neck cancers," he pointed out.

The detection of HPV DNA in oral rinse specimens was associated with a 7.1-fold increase in the odds of incident HNSCC (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.2 - 22.6), after adjustment for smoking history and alcohol consumption.

However, oral DNA detection of other high-risk oncogenic HPV types, excluding HPV16, was not associated with the risk for HNSCC.